hardbacked book with a blue cover, the first book we were issued with. We were told to learn it by heart, and we did.)
For most of its history, Newgate had been a boarding school dedicated to turning the superfluous sons of moneyed families into military officers or, failing that, into the kind of brave, loyal, and gormless chaps who were the worker ants of the British Empire.
When Goz and I arrived, slack-jawed and fearful, many of Newgate’s ancient and honorable traditions were still in place. They included ritual humiliation, physical bullying, incessant sarcasm, public undressing, violent games, caning, snobbery, ferocious patriotism, and the singing of the national anthem on the least pretext. (Such as the Duke of Kent’s birthday or the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile.) There were still boarders. They lived — for want of a better verb — on the top floor of School House, accessed by a formidable back door.
Rule 13: The rear entrance is forbidden to all boys other than boarders. (We all had a good snigger about that one.)
Most of the rest of School House was the generous living quarters of the headmaster, B. O. “Stinker” Bloxham, and his family. Since this family consisted only of the old tyrant, his fat strident wife, and his daughter (a rarely glimpsed teenager whose eyes aimed in two different directions simultaneously), they must have had little difficulty in avoiding one another. One huge room was the Head’s study. I was inside it only once, for an arse caning in 1958. Another was the Nelson Library, named after Norfolk’s best-known adulterer, which only sixth-formers were allowed to use. The real school, where actual teaching took place, was concealed behind School House: a ramshackle collection of ugly buildings surrounding the playground. “Playground” is what it was called, but the word suggests something inappropriate. Not much playing went on. Imagine it, rather, as the kind of bleak area vibrating with tribal hostility and potential violence that you see in American prison movies.
The boarders were there not on merit, like me and Goz, but because their fathers (military men, to a man) paid fees. They were generally, therefore, a bit thick.
But only sixth-form boarders could be prefects or house captains — or the Gestapo, as they were jovially called. Goz and I came up against the Gestapo on our first day, at lunch.
( Lunch. What a social litmus paper that word was! At Millfields Primary, we’d had “school dinner,” which we ate, uncritically, in the middle of the day. In the evenings, when fathers came home from work, we had “tea.” On weekends we had dinner at twelve o’clock on Saturdays and one o’clock on Sundays. We’d never heard of lunch, which was, it turned out, short for luncheon and rhymed with truncheon. We’d gone to a new school and discovered a meal we never knew existed. And we ate it in a room we’d never heard of: a refectory. There’s upward mobility for you.)
I was scooping pudding — semolina with a splot of thin red jam on it, like a clot from a nosebleed — into my mouth when Goz nudged me. I looked up and saw that a line of, well, men, blokes, was leaning against the oak-paneled wall of the refectory, looking down at us new boys. Men in school uniforms. Uniforms the same as ours, except that they all had long trousers (we wore chafing flannel shorts) and wore yellow waistcoats under their blazers. And they all carried bendy little cane walking sticks, like the one Charlie Chaplin had in the old silent movies. The one nearest us had a faint rabbit-colored mustache.
He said, “Well, Matthews, what are these, would you say? Worms or Maggots?”
Rule 32: Fee-paying first-year boarders are “Worms.” First-year Scholarship boys are “Maggots.”
The Gestapo called Matthews studied us and sighed. “Mainly Maggots, by the smell of ’em, Shipton. Seems to be mostly Maggots, these days, worse luck.”
Shipton said, “See anything you
For most of its history, Newgate had been a boarding school dedicated to turning the superfluous sons of moneyed families into military officers or, failing that, into the kind of brave, loyal, and gormless chaps who were the worker ants of the British Empire.
When Goz and I arrived, slack-jawed and fearful, many of Newgate’s ancient and honorable traditions were still in place. They included ritual humiliation, physical bullying, incessant sarcasm, public undressing, violent games, caning, snobbery, ferocious patriotism, and the singing of the national anthem on the least pretext. (Such as the Duke of Kent’s birthday or the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile.) There were still boarders. They lived — for want of a better verb — on the top floor of School House, accessed by a formidable back door.
Rule 13: The rear entrance is forbidden to all boys other than boarders. (We all had a good snigger about that one.)
Most of the rest of School House was the generous living quarters of the headmaster, B. O. “Stinker” Bloxham, and his family. Since this family consisted only of the old tyrant, his fat strident wife, and his daughter (a rarely glimpsed teenager whose eyes aimed in two different directions simultaneously), they must have had little difficulty in avoiding one another. One huge room was the Head’s study. I was inside it only once, for an arse caning in 1958. Another was the Nelson Library, named after Norfolk’s best-known adulterer, which only sixth-formers were allowed to use. The real school, where actual teaching took place, was concealed behind School House: a ramshackle collection of ugly buildings surrounding the playground. “Playground” is what it was called, but the word suggests something inappropriate. Not much playing went on. Imagine it, rather, as the kind of bleak area vibrating with tribal hostility and potential violence that you see in American prison movies.
The boarders were there not on merit, like me and Goz, but because their fathers (military men, to a man) paid fees. They were generally, therefore, a bit thick.
But only sixth-form boarders could be prefects or house captains — or the Gestapo, as they were jovially called. Goz and I came up against the Gestapo on our first day, at lunch.
( Lunch. What a social litmus paper that word was! At Millfields Primary, we’d had “school dinner,” which we ate, uncritically, in the middle of the day. In the evenings, when fathers came home from work, we had “tea.” On weekends we had dinner at twelve o’clock on Saturdays and one o’clock on Sundays. We’d never heard of lunch, which was, it turned out, short for luncheon and rhymed with truncheon. We’d gone to a new school and discovered a meal we never knew existed. And we ate it in a room we’d never heard of: a refectory. There’s upward mobility for you.)
I was scooping pudding — semolina with a splot of thin red jam on it, like a clot from a nosebleed — into my mouth when Goz nudged me. I looked up and saw that a line of, well, men, blokes, was leaning against the oak-paneled wall of the refectory, looking down at us new boys. Men in school uniforms. Uniforms the same as ours, except that they all had long trousers (we wore chafing flannel shorts) and wore yellow waistcoats under their blazers. And they all carried bendy little cane walking sticks, like the one Charlie Chaplin had in the old silent movies. The one nearest us had a faint rabbit-colored mustache.
He said, “Well, Matthews, what are these, would you say? Worms or Maggots?”
Rule 32: Fee-paying first-year boarders are “Worms.” First-year Scholarship boys are “Maggots.”
The Gestapo called Matthews studied us and sighed. “Mainly Maggots, by the smell of ’em, Shipton. Seems to be mostly Maggots, these days, worse luck.”
Shipton said, “See anything you
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